Walking through the booths, with my 7-year old at my side, brought us so much enjoyment and excitement for makers.
You see, we’re beginner makers. We have a Prusa 3D printer and have been printing other people’s creations.
On a gloomy, chilly Saturday, we drove up to San Mateo to attend Maker Faire Bay Area. We were first timers filled with anticipation. My son was excstatic to be doing a father-son event which included building things.
Once we entered the gates and took our photo with the Maker Bot we headed straight to the Google tent. A good start to build our maker minds as we learned how to solder a simple LED rocket.
The lesson was enough to keep Gabe engaged, interested, and intrigued. His mouth grinned from side to side as he showed me his first successful creation. With a soldering iron at that!
For me, it increased my desire to work with PCB. I imagine this will be one of my first projects because I have ideas.
Heading inside, a booth which grabbed Gabe’s attention instantly was a paper plane booth. It was the person who carried the World Record for the longest paper plane flight. On display were paper planes with different flight paths. I found it fun to see what you can do with paper.
While checking out technology, Gabe got his first glimpse of virtual reality and gained a new interest in doing light saver battles. That will be useful later if I decide to get Oculus.
But I wanted him to get more into programming and robotics. We ended up in an area of robot builders and that’s where our eyes widened. The thought of building a robot and having it perform tasks really got us inspired. From Chuck E. Cheese type robots to battle bots. It’s amazing what people can come up with.
We may have just planned Gabe’s next birthday party by checking out a booth specializing in battle bot parties.
At the end, feeling tired, inspired and excited, we left with the rain falling at its peak. We had some fun with the puddles and talked about what we can look forward to creating and how we would get to that point. I think it’s wonderful to instill more creativity into my son when we live in such a digital world. Making my way towards being a consumer and into a maker.
